Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

601–610 of 870 posts

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#601

Post by thevillagechief »

pards wrote: post #575
striking wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just brain atrophy, I think. I think part of it is that we're actively making a tradeoff to focus on learning how to use the model rather than learning how to use our own brains and work with each other. This would be fine if not for one thing: the meta-skill of learning to use the LLM depreciates too. Today's LLM is gonna go away someday, the way you have to use it will change. You will be on a forever trea…

> I happen to rent and can't keep This is my fear - what happens if the AI companies can't find a path to profitability and shut down?

Don't threaten us with a good time.

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#602

Post by noisy_boy »

> I am bracing for 2026 as the year of the slopacolypse across all of github, substack, arxiv, X/instagram, and generally all digital media.

2026 is just when it picks up - it'll get exponentially worse.

I think 2026 is the year of Business Analysts who were unable to code. Now CC et all are good enough that they can realize the vision as long as one knows exactly the requirements (software design not that important). Programmers who didn't know business could get by so far. Not anymore, because with these tools, the guy who knows business can now code fairly well.

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#603

Post by kitd »

noisy_boy wrote: post #602

> I am bracing for 2026 as the year of the slopacolypse across all of github, substack, arxiv, X/instagram, and generally all digital media. 2026 is just when it picks up - it'll get exponentially worse. I think 2026 is the year of Business Analysts who were unable to code. Now CC et all are good enough that they can realize the vision as long as one knows exactly the requirements (software design not that important)…

with these tools, the guy who knows business can now code fairly well.

... until CC doesn't get it quite right and the guy who knows business doesn't know code.

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#604

Post by infecto »

striking wrote: post #118
daxfohl wrote: post #65

I worry about the "brain atrophy" part, as I've felt this too. And not just atrophy, but even moreso I think it's evolving into "complacency". Like there have been multiple times now where I wanted the code to look a certain way, but it kept pulling back to the way it wanted to do things. Like if I had stated certain design goals recently it would adhere to them, but after a few iterations it would forget again and g…

It's not just brain atrophy, I think. I think part of it is that we're actively making a tradeoff to focus on learning how to use the model rather than learning how to use our own brains and work with each other. This would be fine if not for one thing: the meta-skill of learning to use the LLM depreciates too. Today's LLM is gonna go away someday, the way you have to use it will change. You will be on a forever trea…

I think you have to be aware of how you use any tool but I don’t think this is a forever treadmill. It’s pretty clear to me since early on that the goal is for you the user to not have to craft the perfect prompt. At least for my workflow it’s pretty darn close to that for me.

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#605

Post by giancarlostoro »

atonse wrote: post #11

> LLM coding will split up engineers based on those who primarily liked coding and those who primarily liked building. I’ve always said I’m a builder even though I’ve also enjoyed programming (but for an outcome, never for the sake of the code) This perfectly sums up what I’ve been observing between people like me (builders) who are ecstatic about this new world and programmers who talk about the craft of programming…

Yeah, I think this is a bit of insight I had not realized / been able to word correctly yet. There's developers who can let Claud go at it, and be fearless about it like me (though I mostly do it for side projects, but WOW) and then there's developers who will use it like a hammer or axe to help cut down or mold whatever is in their path.

I think both approaches are okay, the biggest thing for me is the former needs to test way more, and review the code more, as developers we don't read code enough, with the "prompt and forget" approach we have a lot of free time we could spend reading the code, asking the model to refactor and refine the code. I am shocked when I hear about hundreds of thousands of lines in some projects. I've rebuilt Beads from the ground up and I'm under 10 lines of code.

So we're going to have various level of AI Code Builders if you will: Junior, Mid, Senior, Architect. I don't know if models will ever pick up the slack for Juniors any time soon. We would need massive context windows for models, and who will pay for that? We need a major AI breakthrough to where the cost goes down drastically before that becomes profitable.

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#606

Post by kitd »

daxfohl wrote: post #65

I worry about the "brain atrophy" part, as I've felt this too. And not just atrophy, but even moreso I think it's evolving into "complacency". Like there have been multiple times now where I wanted the code to look a certain way, but it kept pulling back to the way it wanted to do things. Like if I had stated certain design goals recently it would adhere to them, but after a few iterations it would forget again and g…

I think this is where tools like OpenSpec [1] may help. The deterioration in quality is because the context is degrading, often due to incomplete or amibiguous requests from the coder. With a more disciplined way of creating and persisting locally the specs for the work, especially if the agent got involved in creating that too, you'll have a much better chance of keeping the agent focussed and aligned.

[1] - https://openspec.dev/

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#607

Post by prettyblocks »

striking wrote: post #118
daxfohl wrote: post #65

I worry about the "brain atrophy" part, as I've felt this too. And not just atrophy, but even moreso I think it's evolving into "complacency". Like there have been multiple times now where I wanted the code to look a certain way, but it kept pulling back to the way it wanted to do things. Like if I had stated certain design goals recently it would adhere to them, but after a few iterations it would forget again and g…

It's not just brain atrophy, I think. I think part of it is that we're actively making a tradeoff to focus on learning how to use the model rather than learning how to use our own brains and work with each other. This would be fine if not for one thing: the meta-skill of learning to use the LLM depreciates too. Today's LLM is gonna go away someday, the way you have to use it will change. You will be on a forever trea…

In my experience all technology has been like this though. We are on the treadmill of learning the new thing with our without LLMs. That's what makes tech work so fun and rewarding (for me anyway).

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#608

Post by HugoDz »

noisy_boy wrote: post #602

> I am bracing for 2026 as the year of the slopacolypse across all of github, substack, arxiv, X/instagram, and generally all digital media. 2026 is just when it picks up - it'll get exponentially worse. I think 2026 is the year of Business Analysts who were unable to code. Now CC et all are good enough that they can realize the vision as long as one knows exactly the requirements (software design not that important)…

Agree here, the code barrier (creating software) was hiding the real mountain: creating software business. The two are very different beasts.

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#609

Post by Antibabelic »

senko wrote: post #600
Antibabelic wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever happened to just typing "apt install qrencode"? It's definitely "fast, reliable, free of surveillance economy bullshit, and doesn't employ URL shorteners".

You need to know "qrencode" exists under that exact name. Claude already knows about it and how to use it.

Sure, but that's entirely different from vibe-coding a tool, which sounds like a colossal waste of resources.

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#610

Post by sosomoxie »

Ronsenshi wrote: post #457
sosomoxie wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've gone years without coding and when I come back to it, it's like riding a bike! In each iteration of my coding career, I have become a better developer, even after a large gap. Now I can "code" during my gap. Were I ever to hand-code again, I'm sure my skills would be there. They don't atrophy, like your ability to ride a bike doesn't atrophy. Yes you may need to warm back up, but all the connections in your brai…

You might still have the skillset to write code, but depending on length of the break your knowledge of tools, frameworks, patterns would be fairly outdated. I used to know a person like that - high in the company structure who would claim he was a great engineer, but all the actual engineers would make jokes about him and his ancient skills during private conversations.

I code in Vim, use Linux... all of those tools are pretty constant. New frameworks are easy to pick up. I've been able to become productive with very little downtime after multi-year breaks several times.
Post reply on HN